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Geneticists say improvements should rival corn during the next decade

Sustainability: feeding the world with the resources available.

These seven trends will impact food production in the future

Jerry Jennissen has proven that you can benefit from a methane digester even when you milk 150 cows.

In 2007, Cargill’s Environmental Finance Group began building a plug-flow digester on Bettencourt Farms’ new Dry Creek Dairy, a 10,000-cow operation near Murtaugh, Idaho. Since going online in September 2008, the 5-million-gallon digester has generated electricity for the Idaho grid, reduced manure odor, cut manure handling costs and produced digester solids for the dairy’s bedding.

One trip to look at an anaerobic digester on a dairy in central Minnesota was all it took to convince Lee Jensen that the technology would be a good fit for his 900-cow Five Star Dairy near Elk Mound, Wis.

Forage quality also contributes to an operation’s carbon footprint. We put significant research into selecting hybrids that give us good tonnage as well as high digestibility. If we can maximize forage digestibility, the cows will more efficiently turn nutrients into milk.

Today’s technology has greatly improved our ability to decrease our carbon footprint. As stewards of the land, farmers care more for the environment than anyone else in the world. We make our living off of the land; why wouldn’t we take care of it?

Carbon emissions and going green definitely seem to be tied to everything these days and dairy farms are in the thick of the debate. Agriculture as a whole has always been at the forefront of efficiency and maximizing productivity to survive. The economic challenges of this past year have put any and all inefficiencies and wasteful practices under a microscope.

I attended the Sustainability Summit for U.S. Dairy in June 2008, put on by Dairy Management Inc. The topic was reducing the carbon footprint of the U.S. dairy industry.